Charter Schools at the Crossroads

In the first decade of this century, charter schools rapidly emerged in major U.S. cities as a beacon of hope for students trapped in failing urban school systems. Offering a much-needed alternative to district-run public schools, which provided little in the way of academic quality or even physical safety to students, charter schools quickly established their ability to raise standards, particularly for low-income students of color. At present, there are 281 New York City charter schools, educating 149,000 students; by comparison, the New York City Department of Education, the nation’s largest school district, enrolls 912,000 students in 1,596 schools. But despite their undeniable impact, charter schools find themselves at something of a crossroads, particularly in major cities in blue states. On the one hand, urban charters have established themselves as a permanent part of the education ecosystem in major cities. On the other, their days of heady growth are almost certainly behind them.

Publicly funded but independently operated, charter schools are mostly run by nonprofit organizations (16 states forbid for-profit charter schools; some, including New York, prevent charters from contracting with for-profit management companies). Charter schools are one of the most prominent examples of states delegating core government functions to the nonprofit sector — and one of the most successful. While critics reliably — and accurately — point out that, on average, charter schools do not perform significantly better than the traditional public schools with which they compete, urban charters are a noteworthy exception — particularly those that are part of networks of schools run by nonprofit charter management organizations (CMOs).

A 2023 study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) found that students enrolled in CMO-run, urban charter schools demonstrated substantial gains in reading and math compared to their counterparts in traditional, district-run public schools. In math, these students advanced by the equivalent of 17 additional school days in a year’s time, and in reading by 23 additional days, compared to their peers in traditional public schools.

CMO-run charters functionally operate as shadow school districts. KIPP, the largest network, operates 278 schools in 28 regions of the country. With more power to dictate curriculum, pedagogy and school culture than traditional, union-dominated public school districts, urban charters like New York City’s Success Academy (founded by former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz) are observably more likely to embrace evidence-based practices including frequent teacher feedback, data-driven instruction, high-dosage tutoring, increased instructional time and high expectations for students and staff alike. Success operates more than 50 schools serving over 22,000 students, roughly the same size as the Syracuse city school district, the state’s third largest. If it were its own district, it would also be the highest performing, easily besting much smaller and more affluent suburban districts on state reading and math tests, even though the vast majority of Success Academy students come from low-income, minority homes.

In the past quarter-century, charter schools in New York City have also launched tens of thousands of low-income Black and brown children to college and beyond. In the aggregate, while the past 30 years of efforts to raise student performance through testing, standards and accountability have offered mixed returns, urban charter schools are one of the few clear and unambiguous victories of the education reform era.

But more than two decades of solidly outperforming district schools hasn’t made urban charter schools politically bulletproof. Quite the opposite. New York hasn’t raised its state-mandated cap on charter schools since 2010. With the exception of the reallocation of a handful of so-called “zombie” charters — schools whose licenses had been surrendered, revoked, terminated or not renewed — no new charters have been granted in New York City in nearly a decade. While there are still occasional parent rallies and op-eds calling for expansion of the sector, charter advocates have quietly abandoned hope of seeing the cap lifted anytime soon, or perhaps ever.

Given their record of student achievement, the lack of political oxygen afforded charter schools might seem counterintuitive. But in retrospect, it’s their rise to prominence and their once outsize influence on both policy and practice that seems most remarkable. Indeed, it is one of the more politically improbable feats in the annals of American education reform. These schools, which were often characterized by their “no excuses” approach to student discipline and academic achievement, managed to flourish in blue states and big cities traditionally dominated by powerful teachers’ unions and a deeply entrenched education bureaucracy. A brief period of bipartisan consensus on the urgent need for education reform and the willingness of philanthropic organizations to invest heavily in this new model helped fuel their rise in New York, Boston, Houston, Denver, Washington and elsewhere.

Charters also benefited from a brief but powerful wave of media and cultural support in the early 2000s that propelled them into the national spotlight. This surge in positive attention was fired by the youthful idealism of the reform movement, a sense of national shame over persistent achievement gaps and a growing frustration with the perceived failings of traditional public schools. Charters, particularly those embracing the “no excuses” philosophy and pedagogy, were portrayed as beacons of hope in disadvantaged communities, offering a path to upward mobility for children who had been failed by the traditional system. Documentaries like “Waiting for Superman” captured the imagination of audiences and helped to humanize the struggle for better schools. This can-do narrative resonated with a public hungry for solutions to the seemingly intractable problem of educational inequality. Even “60 Minutes,” known for its hard-hitting journalism, aired an unusually sympathetic segment on the founders of KIPP, the nation’s most prominent charter school network.

A quarter-century later, urban charter schools operate under a very different set of circumstances. No longer the ingenue at the education reform ball, charters have matured into a significant presence in the landscape, but one whose heady days of growth are likely in the past. Charter schools now educate 3.7 million students in 45 states, representing 7% of all K-12 students. But in many urban areas, charter schools are approaching or have reached a saturation point. The most successful urban charter schools are still oversubscribed and admit students by lottery, but their waiting lists are not as long as in years past. Media coverage, too, turned skeptical and, in some cases, openly hostile to charter schools, highlighting allegations of unruly students being pushed out, the hardest-to-teach students denied admission or claims that stellar test scores were the result of charters “creaming” the best and brightest students from the most engaged families.

Similarly, the political landscape surrounding charter schools is continuing to shift, even among allies. The bipartisan support that once fueled their expansion has dissipated. Democrats have largely realigned with teachers’ unions, emphasizing support for traditional public schools. As one long-time charter advocate describes the state of play, the unions have “learned to live with the sector, but growth is the one thing they oppose adamantly.”

Meanwhile, as Republicans continue to support charter schools and school choice more broadly, their attention and enthusiasm, particularly in red states, has increasingly turned to universal Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) as the preferred lever. ESAs are state-funded accounts that provide families with public funds to pay for approved educational expenses such as private school tuition, tutoring or online courses, allowing parents to customize their child’s education outside the traditional public school system. This shift reflects a growing disillusionment with public schools among conservatives, who see ESAs as a way to empower parents and circumvent what they perceive as failing or ideologically driven public school systems — a critique from which charters are not immune.

Indeed, as the charter school movement has matured, there’s been a move away from the “no excuses” model, a shift borne both of conviction and convenience: Since long-tenured teachers are relatively rare in high-performing urban charter schools, CMOs have tended to rely on substantial numbers of young teachers recruited from top universities to staff classrooms. But where a previous generation’s recent college graduates might have responded warmly to calls to close the achievement gap by urban charter schools devoted to strict discipline, high expectations and rigorous academics, recent grads are increasingly likely to see such schools as “carceral,” rooted in white supremacy and — strong academic results notwithstanding — harmful and insensitive to students of color.

Consequently, many charter schools, including prominent networks like KIPP, have moved toward more “culturally responsive” and “community-centered” approaches. While some charter leaders believe that academic excellence and anti-racism are complementary, others worry that this shift in emphasis comes at the expense of academic rigor and ultimately disadvantages the very students it aims to help. As Ascend Learning Network charter founder Steven F. Wilson put it recently, “Social justice is not the long-awaited correction to America’s procession of exclusionary, anti-intellectual school reforms. It is its apotheosis.” These shifts in attitudes, both political and from within the charter movement itself, suggest that the future of urban charter schools, and their appeal to families attracted by their reputation for academic excellence and physical safety, is nearly certain to be more constrained than their past.

For their part, veterans of New York City’s charter school world say their work is not significantly hampered by these shifts. While communities where some of the city’s early crusading charter schools opened and flourished — Harlem, the South Bronx and Bedford-Stuyvesant — have reached a saturation point, overall charter enrollment continues to grow even as the number of school-age children in the city at large has begun to decline. Since COVID, overall enrollment in New York City charters has increased modestly, from 130,000 students in the 2019-20 school year, to 146,000 last year. Over the same five-year period, New York City’s public schools lost about 50,000 students.

And, while large charter operators publicly bemoan the state’s cap on new charters, they continue to add students onto their existing charters. One charter leader privately insists the cap is healthy for the sector since it creates “cutthroat competition” for students, which incentivizes operators to improve school quality. That said, bellwether Success Academy, which as recently as 2017 had set a goal of operating 100 schools in New York City, has been shifting its expansion focus to charter- and choice-friendly Florida and Texas.

The future of the charter school movement will be shaped by its ability to adapt to these changes in the political winds. In blue states, where the charter sector is nearing capacity and facing pushback from unions, growth will almost certainly be limited. The sector’s focus will likely continue to shift toward refining existing models and deepening their impact within communities, and away from launching new schools. Hopes are fading that a new generation of dynamic, high-profile leaders will emerge to reinvigorate the charter school movement, akin to KIPP’s Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg or Success Academy’s Eva Moskowitz. One long-time political operative in the sector laments these kinds of visionaries “may not exist” going forward. His advocacy now prioritizes “getting more money and better operating terms for schools already in existence.”

In red states, the rise of ESAs could present a further challenge. Charter schools will almost certainly face increased competition for students and funding as families embrace the flexibility offered by ESAs. Alternatively, charter schools could leverage their experience and expertise to position themselves as attractive options within the expanding ESA marketplace. Arizona-based Great Hearts Academies, for example, recently opened a pair of low-cost private schools in Phoenix designed to operate on ESA funds alone. The ability to innovate and respond to political reality and parental preferences will be critical for the continued success of charter schools in this evolving education landscape.